The Headmaster's Wife(49)

“Maybe,” Mark said, “but I don’t think that was the point. According to the rumors, this wasn’t the first time and Michael wasn’t the first kid. She makes a habit of it.”

“A habit of sleeping with students?”

“A habit of sleeping with a particular kind of student—with scholarship students. The last two were African American.”

“But Michael Feyre wasn’t a scholarship student, was he? I have a contact in Boston who said that Michael Feyre’s mother won—”

“The Powerball, yeah, for like three hundred million dollars or something. I met her. She’s nice. But Michael was like a cliché, for God’s sake. White trash nation. Right down to the air guitar concerts to Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

Gregor had no idea who Lynyrd Skynyrd was, but he didn’t think it was a good move to say so. “So you think he might have been depressed enough about this affair with Alice Makepeace to commit suicide?”

“I think he might have been if she’d wanted to break it off,” Mark said. “The tiling is I don’t think she did want to break it off. I mean, I didn’t talk to her about it, but he wasn’t acting like that. And he was obsessed with her. More white trash nation. It was like one of those stalker movies.”

“People who are stalked don’t usually want to be,” Gregor said.

“She did,” Mark was adamant. “She used to send him messages on the voice mail. I’d get them sometimes by mistake if I got back to the room before he did. She set up the meetings more often than he did. I think she wanted to talk to me about it.”

Gregor was curious. “You only think?”

“She came down to the computer room this morning when I was there alone. I was blasting space aliens out of the sky to get rid of my aggression, if you catch my drift. She came to the door and waited, and I pretended not to see her.”

“Why?”

“Because she creeps me out. She’s one of those people. It’s like talking to a pod person. And I really didn’t want to talk about Michael to her. It just seemed wrong.” Markblinked twice and then put his head in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really was having a good day, and now I’m dizzy again. It’s just the sleep. I can’t sleep.”

Gregor leaned closer to get a better look. Mark’s face had gone as white as chalk. Gregor had heard that cliché a thousand times, but this was the first time he’d ever seen a person who fit it. Mark’s pupils were dilated, too, and the whites around them were shot through with red. The muscles in his shoulders were twitching.

“Mark,” he asked, “are you sure you didn’t take something? Just before you met me, maybe, or while you were in the bathroom?”

“No. Christ. I wish they’d just do a drug test and get it over with. I’m not taking anything. I’m not—I’m just like this. Almost all the time now. It just is.”

Mark was swaying in his chair. Gregor pulled at his arm.

“Come on,” he said. “Lie down. You look like you need to.”

Mark swayed to his feet, blinking. “My head is full of fuzz. All the time. And I can’t read. Did I tell you that? I sit down with a book and read the page, but I can’t remember what’s on it. I finish the page and it’s as if I’d never read it and that’s nuts because it used to be that I didn’t even have to pay attention. I could read the page and then later I could sort of remember what it looked like. I could sort of project it on the back of my eyelids and read it again. Like that. And now I can’t remember anything, and I can’t understand anything. At least not most of the time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Gregor pushed Mark over to the bed and then onto it. “Try lying down for a while,” he said, but he might as well not have. Mark hit the bed and seemed to be instantaneously asleep. Gregor would have thought he’d passed out if it hadn’t been for the fact that his breathing was more regular than it had been at any other time in their conversation today and the further fact that he was snoring.

Gregor sat down on the edge of the bed and checked him over. He was sleeping, that was all. He was as soundly and thoroughly asleep as Rip Van Winkle.

At first Gregor thought he would wake Mark DeAvecca before he had to go out to his dinner meeting; but when the time came, he found that impossible to do. It wasn’t that Mark wouldn’t wake up. If that had been the case, Gregor would have canceled his dinner appointment and called an ambulance. It was more that he couldn’t bear to wake him. The boy looked healthier and more peaceful than he had all day. Gregor wondered why he couldn’t sleep in the normal run of things. He was certainly sleeping now.